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Forum » Rugby » Pollard - an evaluation of his approach to the game
clevermikeHall Of Famer
56,065 posts
Apr 04, 2017, 13:12
Looking at the above and especially the high-lighted paragraphs worry me a lot. Have we got a duplicate of Morne Steyn here - if he is in fact a clone of Morne - even with the best of efforts he will inevitably fail and will in fact neutralize any backline play - ie a failure of the pivot.
Mozart
I wrote that before I went back to Pollard's first ttest in which he was brilliant. After that there were signs it was voming through that obvous that the way Meyer coached he kicked the ball in the same way Morne kickedx balls aimlessly - Pollard was in and out of the team until the Japan Disaster after which he played in every subnsequent trest je played on he got progressively worse,
Pillard played in no rest in 2016 and 2017 and I wrote after the above quote that Meyer came near to destroying Pollard as a player and it was then when Eramus asked him how he saw the way the flyhalf must be played as a backline pivoyt and that stared the rehabilitation as a pivot/ It us by now 8 years later and in tests this ear he was bck to kicking balls away aimlessly,
It was after the latest match URC match clear that he was not the same player he became in 2018 under Easmus coaching and his standard detriorated since 2023.annd he bwcame slower in decisionmaking to what Morne did , .
‘Even with the best efforts he will inevitably fail’ ….that’s what you said.
Before I identified the real poblems Polalrd was nearky destroyed by Meyer - I wrote so clearly on this site,
So having been outed you shift the blame for a non existent problem to another of your whipping boys HM. It can’t be long before it before these problems you imagine exist become the fault of Esterhozen.
Mozart
With all due respect Pollard underperformed badly in t he Edeen Patrk test and never played any ru gby since then. I was hoping that players like Etzebeth and Polalrd will make it to the 2027 RWC - but what I have seen this year that is a day dream.and not absed on actual perormances,
Pollard never was a speed merchant - but he is getting slower in both attacking play and decissionmaing - a cardinal requirement from pivots,
s to Esterhuizen - he is 90% par and nothing like t he sh t dreamed up on sie about how good a player he is based entirely on hatred for De Allende who si a far better reader of games than the slow player he is - physically as well a mentally. At 31 he si not getting better as a player, he aways was averaage and that si why Ersus did not include him in the 2019 RWC squad and when Kriel was to be repalced he called up Willemse - a ten times better 12 than Esterhuizen can ever be. So dream on dumbness.
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56,476 posts
There was a report in Rugby 365 that Pollard will be out of the rest of the October URC matches of the Bulls without indicating no information about t he nature of the injury. However, Pollard ha a problem namely that when he was injured in the pass he was often absent for months.
Thee URC matches ends on 25 October amd in the emantime the Bulls must play Connacht and Glasgo away - after which the EOYT series kicked in, From what I saw of the Bulls game he was in poor form but he may have played with an injury problem. I can see a situation that he may not be in the upcoming test setries in November,
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